Pause in Blog

Whether permanent or not, this blog is now combined with my other one Alchemy of Clay. http://blackmtnbarb.blogspot.com/ go there, and then follow me over there. The personal and genealogical archives, and Black Mountain NC scenery and my potting life are combined. It's a good thing.

Monday, September 30, 2013

The winter New England storms

Recently I wrote of a hurricane in Galveston TX in 1900. It was before storms were given names.
But there was a weather bureau established already.

Let's look back another century or two, to the 1700's.

Winters
to Remember---1778, The North Shore certainly has seen its share of
"Winters to remember," and many of these were chronicled by historian
Sidney Perley in his "Historic Storms of New England." (1891)

One of the
most devastating snowstorms in local history occurred in a few-month
period beginning in December 1716 & ending in late February the
following year. A series of December snowstorms left five feet of snow
on the ground, & by mid-Feb. a base of three feet still blanketed
the area. But the worst was yet to come. On Feb. 18, a heavy
snowstorm enveloped New England & lasted for four days. It abated
briefly on the 22nd. & 23rd., but resumed on the 24th. with a
vengeance. By the end of the storm, the North Shore lay under 10 to 15
feet of snow.

Many single-story homes were covered. Residents dug
tunnels beneath the snow between their homes & their barns or
neighbors' houses. Those wishing to walk on top of the snow needed
snowshoes to do so.The impact of the storm on livestock & wild
animals in the area was devastating. Flocks of sheep & herds of
cattle & horses were buried under the deep snow & suffocated.
Miraculously, nearly a month after the storm ended, two sheep were found
alive under 16 feet of snow. They had survived by eating the wool of
their dead companions.Starving bears, foxes & wolves hunted down
equally hungry deer & ate them. Perley notes that 19 out of every
20 deer in the region were killed in this period.

Perley recounts the plight of two Marblehead men, Thomas Hooper
& Valentine Tidder Jr; during a blizzard that hit New England in
early Dec. 1876. The men left Salem on foot for home after dark on a
Saturday night despite the fact that it had been snowing heavily for
nearly 24 hours. The two became disoriented & eventually got
separated from each other. Their bodies were found in open fields far
from the Salem-Marblehead road.

Two other area men fared better during
that same storm, Samuel Pulsifer & Samuel Elwell were trapped near
Hog Island in Ipswich & took refuge in the middle of a haystack.
The hay kept them warm & dry for a time, but eventually the
haystack was carried away by rising waters. The terrified pair floated
for hours atop the pile, & were headed out to sea. Eventually,
though, they were able to summon enough strength & courage to jump
onto a passing cake of ice which eventually took them to an island very
close to shore. There they were rescued by Maj. Charles Smith of
Ipswich.

Snowstorms were equally treacherous to mariners. In a terrible
blizzard in Feb. 1802, three Salem ships--The Brutus, the Ulysses, &
the Volusia were aground in the shallow waters off Cape Cod. The crew
members of the latter two vessels were fortunate enough to be rescued
by local inhabitants. The seamen on the Brutus were not so lucky as
nine of the 14 crew members perished. One of the survivors, Benjamin
Ober of Manchester, came to be buried up to his neck in sand &
snow. He was too weak to dig his way out & his voice was way too
hoarse to yell to potential rescuers. Finally after 36 agonizing hours,
he was rescued. Sadly, he expired shortly thereafter.

At Ancestry.com this is the source listed, but obviously there are
editorial comments of a more recent nature, so I can't say what part of
this came from...Geneology of the Swasey Family 1910 by Benjamin Swasey an ebook that is available on line.

I was caught by the name Samuel Pulsifer, because a few generations before, some of the Pulsifer family moved to Louisiana and Texas...and Lucy Pulsifer, who was born in 1807 in Newburyport, MA moved to the area that would become Beaumont Texas. Well, I don't know how she was related to the poor man in the haystack in 1876 near Ipswitch.

I am reminded that storms are a force of nature, which make humans feel so small and insignificant. And there are many that happen and aren't recorded and noticed by humanity. I wonder if in pre-historic days there were ever cave-paintings or carvings to indicate these forces. I have never heard of them if they existed.